No Boring Day

Having been on my deployment up in the Arctic of Canada, there have been so many experiences I am so excited to share with all of you. I will be releasing stories and adventures in multiple installments, so it won’t be a 100 page write up hahaha.

The first one.

The Franklin Exhibition

There are things in life that you never think would be possible to experience. Things you read about in books, and think that would be so cool to be able to see. Realizing that thought is just that, a thought it is put aside. On this deployment I was given the opportunity to see this piece of history with my own eyes.

John Franklin Departed England in 1845 With the two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, on the assignment to traverse the last un navigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. Their goal was to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation.

To prepare for the voyage and the ability to break ice, the two ships were reinforced with steam engines, single screw propeller in each vessel, taking engines from the London & Croydon Railway. Having these engines resulted in the ships being able to go 7.4km/h or 4 Nautical miles per hour. Which could be used if the seas were minimal for the sails.

Along with the engines bows were reinforced with heavy beams and iron plates, an internal steam heating system, and a system of iron wells that allowed the screw propellers and iron rudders to be withdrawn into the hull of the ship to be protected from damage.

Both ships were supplied with libraries of more than 1,000 books, three years of food supply, some of which included tinned soup, and vegetables, salt-cured meat, live Cattle and pemmican (what this is, say you made a roast beef and then put it in the fridge then the fat rises to the top, you would scoop this fat out and add berries to it, and it would be consumed as food fuelling the body.) gross I know, but settlers lived for years on that.

Beginning their sail, on 19th of May 1845 the crew of 24 Officers and 110 men set sail, they sail to Orkney Islands in Scotland and then proceeded to Greenland with HMS Rattler and a transport ship Barretto Junior, this passage took 30 days. Once alongside the west coast of Greenland 10 Oxen carried on the Barreto Junior were slaughtered and transferred to Erabus and Terror. Here is where crew members wrote their last letters home. 5 men were sent back to England due to sickness leaving the crew at a total of 129.

In July 1845 the crew passed by a whaler’s ship in Baffin Bay. This was to be the last contact anyone had with the two ships. According to the information on the sole note that has been found to this date on Victoria Point, on King William Island it is explained: The two ships spent the winter of 1845-1846 on Beechey Island, where three crew members died and are buried. They then travelled down perry sound through the summer of 1846, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus became trapped in the ice for two years off King William Island in 1846-1847 and 1847-1848 due to the worst winter in recorded history, the ice did not melt during the summer. Franklin died on King William Island 11th June 1847. By the point of Franklins Death 8 further officers and 15 men had also died. It was then that the remaining crew had abandoned the ships and planned to walk over the Island, across the sea ice, heading toward Back River on the Canadian Mainland trying to reach civilization.

During this deployment I got the opportunity to see these places, I was blessed with looking at the camp site on Beechy Island see the remains of what was left, see the dissolute of the surrounding area, and imagining the fear of being stuck in the ice. Sailing down Perry Sound I and coming to King William Island, this island is as flat as the southern prairies, looking at it I was overcome with relation (being from the Prairies) to how cold and windy it would have been and what they must have had to endure. As we got into the landing craft to go walk in the footsteps of Franklin and his exhibition, I was beyond excited. However, as we pulled close to shore, lookouts spotted a momma and two cub polar bears. The momma made it known that this was her Island and considering Polar bears are one of two animals (the other Grizzley Bears) that actively hunt to kill humans we did not go ashore.

Throughout my life and adventures, I have walked on or seen moments in history, though cherishing all those experiences what made this one unique was the fact that the land up here in the Arctic is untouched. Only a handful of people have ever sailed these waters. And even less have seen or walked on the two Islands that Franklin wintered in, therefore leaving the land the same as it was 176 years ago when Franklin and his expedition walked these lands. There has been no tampering with, not vandalism, and nothing has differed other than nature and time.

This is an experience and a piece of history that I am beyond blessed to have had the opportunity to see.